Eckhart Tolle Quotes

When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. The mind itself is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are.

Attention is the key to transformation- and full attention also implies acceptance.

If you are in a state of intense presence you are free of thought, yet highly alert. If your conscious attention sinks below a certain level, thought rushes in, the mental noise returns, stillness is lost, you're back in time.

All I can be is who I am right now; I can experience that and work with it. That's all I can do. The rest is the dream of the ego.

Why is patience so important?" "Because it makes us pay attention.

Breathe in and take one step, and focus all your attention on the sole of your foot. If you have not arrived fully, one hundred percent in the here and the now, don't take the next step.

It's a wonderful thing to perceive the world and to interact with it and with other people and nature from that deep place of utter stillness, where the compulsion to immediately label and interpret whatever arises around you is no longer there.

I don't concentrate on if a moment is scary or not. That's not my job.

When you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. You do not need it anymore. Presence is the key. Now is the key.

Learn to become still, and take your attention away from what you don't want

Any material form, or thought, or feeling, past or present, should be regarded as, 'This is not mine, this is not what I am, this is not my self.'

There are a lot of different ways to talk about mindfulness, but what it really means is awareness.

Between two thoughts try to be alert; look into the interval, the space in between. You will see no mind; that is your nature. For thoughts come and go - they are accidental - but that inner space always remains. Clouds gather and go, disappear - they are accidental - but the sky remains. You are the sky.

So for a period of time each day, try to sit, without moving, without expecting anything, as if you were in your last moment. Moment after moment you feel your last instant. In each inhalation and each exhalation there are countless instants of time. Your intention is to live in each instant.

When you approach something to photograph it, first be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence. Then don't leave until you have captured its essence.

Most of the time, if you're not really paying attention, you're someplace else. So your child might say, "Daddy, I want this," and you might say, "Just a minute, I'm busy." Now that's no big deal-we all get busy, and kids frequently ask for attention. But over your child's entire youth, you may have an enormous number of such moments to be really, fully present, but because you thought you were busy, you didn't see the opportunities these moments presented. . . . People carry around an enormous amount of grief because they missed the little things.

Without any fight, just being a witness, mind disappears.

Praying It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.

Often we tell ourselves, "Don't just sit there, do something!" But when we practice awareness, we discover that the opposite may be more helpful: "Don't just do something, sit there!"

We are defined by how we place our attention.

When awareness embraces the senses, it enlivens them.

Is there a meditation that is not the ego trying to become? Is meditation conscious if every effort implies time?

You cannot drop the ego. Once you start trying to drop the ego you will get in a very deep mess; you will become more and more worried and puzzled. And this is not the way to get rid of the ego. The only way to get rid of the ego is to look at it.

Each moment of life is only as precious as is our ability to attend to it.

Any work of art makes one very simple demand on anyone who genuinely wants to get in touch with it. And that is to stop. You've got to stop what you're doing, what you're thinking, and what you're expecting and just be there for the poem for however long it takes.